Management of multi-computer environments, such as enterprise environments that might include computing systems associated with different stages of product development (e.g., development, quality assurance, and production), different locations, different roles within the enterprise, etc., can be challenging to administer. In addition to such difficulties, information security systems can impede remote administration. To overcome such difficulties in distributed computing environments, deployment of software upgrades, patches, and new installations often require development of custom scripts or specialized hardware. As used herein, the term “distributed computing environment” refers to computing systems configured to communicate with other computing systems through one or more network connections to perform a particular operation, which may provide a service to an end user. Further as used herein, the term “networked computing system” refers to one or more devices configured to send and receive data through a network connection.
One example of a specialized hardware solution is represented by a standard called Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) Specification, Second Generation,” v. 2.0, Feb. 12, 2004 (hereinafter the “IPMI Standard”), which involves a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) included in each server-class computer. The BMC is a specialized microcontroller embedded on the motherboard of each of the server class computing systems to be supported and is configured to manage the interface between the system management software and the platform hardware. The BMC provides a means for updating firmware on a host computing system, where the BMC of the host computing system communicates with a remote management application to update the BIOS firmware of the host computing system. In the IPMI Standard, a serial port of the host computing system is remapped so that all outgoing communications directed to that serial port are routed over the server's local area network interface, allowing the BMC to communicate with the remote management application via the local area network.